www.siyasat.net Dr. Javed Jamil
MeTooMovement has now hit India. Every day, new victims are emerging with new victimizers. India is fast becoming westernized in terms of the laws, culture and their impact. The stories will keep hitting the media. New cases will register with lawyers on both sides ensuring tremendous earning for them. Media of course will keep the audience glued with increased TRP. No one will speak any word against the new sex and sexuality espoused by the champions of “Sexual Revolution” in the name of “Freedom of Choice”. No one will ask for an effective ban on the provocation available in the media and public. The NGOs will emerge with the proposals of counseling for the women working in various industries arguing that this will save women. Women will be convinced by the agents of the Market that they should continue to enter the glamour industry without fear. The amount of money and fame they get will keep fear away from them. The Counselors will train them how to avoid sexual advances and if they are assaulted, they will be given all the legal help they need.
According to the UN, around 120 million girls worldwide (slightly more than 1 in 10) have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their lives. More than 250000 cases of rapes are reported every year. With almost 90 pc cases going unreported, it means that around 2.5 million rapes occur every year, out of which 90 pc are women. Of course, with new sexuality, rapes of men are also reported. According to NSVRC, these are important findings about Sexual Assault in the United States. (https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics)
One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives
In the U.S., one in three women and one in six men experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetime
51.1% of female victims of rape reported being raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% by an acquaintance
52.4% of male victims report being raped by an acquaintance and 15.1% by a stranger
91% of victims of rape and sexual assault are female, and nine percent are male
In eight out of 10 cases of rape, the victim knew the perpetrator
Eight percent of rapes occur while the victim is at work
And if we know the statistics related to the economics of rapes, we can easily know why rapes will continue to occur without any effective remedial measures being proposed. According to the same site,
The lifetime cost of rape per victim is $122,461
Annually, rape costs the U.S. more than any other crime ($127 billion), followed by assault ($93 billion), murder ($71 billion), and drunk driving, including fatalities
Health care is 16% higher for women who were sexually abused as children and 36% higher for women who were physically and sexually abused as children
Obviously, all this money goes to Law Industry, Medical Industry and many more.
The combined effect of the commercialisation of sex, the social culture it spawned and the legal framework that its proponents propelled was an overwhelming increase in all kinds of violence. Rapes, murders, abuses and the other forms of domestic violence have reached a level at which society loses its claim of being civilised. The conditions that prevail in a typical Western society, or any society that follows Western legal system or tries to imitate its social norms, are good enough for rapes to abound. The empowerment of women sans security has made them easy targets. They are no longer confined to the safe environs of family for most of the time. They usually get out of out of their houses early in the day and do not come back till the night has settled in. They are normally not accompanied by any that would guard them. Often, they are travelling or walking in lonely areas away from the public gaze. They happen to be in situations and places where their screams for help have little chances to be heard. Their appearance hardly helps them. While several factors contribute to the rise in the incidence of rapes, two are the chief culprits. The first and more important is the laxity of law, in word as well as in practice. The second is the provocative images in the media, including soft and hard porn, nude pictures and highly provocative write-ups. It can be argued that rape is more “violence manifested in sex rather than sex manifested in violence”. However, whichever the case, the truth is that the above two factors remain the ultimate culprits. It may be right that it is the desire to overpower a person rather than have sex is responsible for rapes. But these could never have culminated into sexual assaults, except in a small number of cases, if the atmosphere had not been so terrifically charged with sex and the law not been so terribly impotent, as they have become.
According to Justice Department, in the US, one in two rape victims are under 18, and one in six under 12. This means that more than two third of victims are those that have not attained the official age of adulthood. The same is true of most of the countries having modern legal and social systems. Cases are often reported in the media where the victims of rape are children less than 6. How rape is demolishing the whole myth of women’s “freedom” and “empowerment” can be gauged from the statistics that look horrible in the very first sight. Every eleventh woman in the US and every fourth in South Africa have been raped, and attempt to rape has been made on every fourth woman in the US and every second in South Africa. Conditions in most of the European countries are no better. What is disturbing is that only 6% cases are punished.
MeTooMovement will continue at least for some time. Nobody in the media will count the numbers of sexual assaults and actual rapes, numbers of suicides, family break-ups, abortions and Sex related diseases and deaths occurring every year. Nobody will argue that unless all sources of provocation (in the media and public) are effectively removed and severe punishments are given to the guilty, the barbarism caused by the “Sexual Revolution” so assiduously promoted by the forces of economics, will continue to engulf people. The litigations will see the accusations being totally denied and proved wrong in the end and there will be charges that in fact the women themselves advanced on them. Human beings (both men and women) will continue to turn into commercial beings. Problems will keep emerging and almost always solutions will be presented that will manage rather than prevent the problem.
Dr Javed Jamil is India based thinker and writer and Head of Chair in Islamic Studies & research, Yenepoya University, Mangalore, with over a dozen books including his latest, “Muslim Vision of Secular India: Destination & Road-map” and “Qur’anic Paradigms of Sciences & Society” (First Vol: Health), “Muslims Most Civilised, Yet Not Enough” and Other works include “The Devil of Economic Fundamentalism”, “The Essence of the Divine Verses”, “The Killer Sex”, “Islam means Peace” and “Rediscovering the Universe”.
